“House of Cards” Doesn’t Care What You Think

Note: This post contains spoilers about the first episode of Season 2.

“House of Cards,” back now with its entire second season streaming on Netflix, is a show about contempt. There is contempt in the general, interpersonal sense: the politicians, operatives, journalists, and various other D.C. types all hold one another in especially expressive disregard. (Last season, Francis Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, explained his relationship to his colleagues like this: “They talk while I sit quietly and imagine their lightly salted faces frying in a skillet.”) And there is contempt in the legal sense—the plots turn on the subversion and manipulation of rules and regulations, and the breaking of laws (murder, etc.) for personal gain and professional advancement. Ethics, like feelings, are obstacles, and beneath consideration.

By extension, the show’s vision of Washington also expresses an implicit contempt for the American public. We are the ones, after all, who tolerate and thus perpetuate the real-life theatre of venality and aggression from which “House of Cards” derives its plausibility. In the run-up to Season 2, the show's popularity among actual D.C. pols has generated light amusement—as if this fact gives some clue to how they’d prefer to behave. The House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy joked, referring to the show: “If I could just kill one member of Congress, my job would be a whole lot easier.” In December, President Obama said, of Frank, “Man, this guy’s getting a lot of stuff done.” Spacey’s Frank Underwood is not the politician we would want, but, in this cynical moment, the thinking goes, he might be the one whom we deserve.

The show’s creators certainly think so—or at least they enjoy pretending that they do. In Season 2, they have managed to mine still another, deeper level of contempt—an eager disdain for the audience itself. Near the end of the first hour, Zoe Barnes, the reporter and sometimes collaborator with Underwood, played by Kate Mara, is swiftly and suddenly dispatched—pushed in front of an oncoming Metro train by none other than Underwood himself, who, thanks to his dealings in the first season, is about to become the Vice-President of the United States. This is, of course, a significant (if absurd) twist. Zoe was perhaps the second most important character on the show, and she seemed likely to stick around for the duration—though fans of the original British version of the series may have seen her exit coming. Not that American viewers should be entirely surprised, either: last season, when the show unceremoniously lowered the blade on Peter Russo, played by a mesmerizing Corey Stoll, it demonstrated a sense of its own bravado, proving that it could be as ruthless and unsentimental as its main character. But the decision was also unpopular: Peter was the show’s most nuanced character, and he is missed. Zoe is, too.

As if anticipating this, Frank speaks directly to the audience in the episode’s final scene, breaking the fourth wall as he had throughout the previous season. He stands before a mirror, his face reflected back at us:

Did you think I’d forgotten you? Perhaps you hoped I had. Don’t waste a breath mourning Miss Barnes. Every kitten grows up to be a cat. They seem so harmless at first—small, quiet, lapping up their saucer of milk. But once their claws get long enough, they draw blood. Sometimes from the hand that feeds them. For those of us climbing to the top of the food chain, there can be no mercy. There is but one rule: hunt or be hunted. Welcome back.

The speech is a heavy-handed moment of small-screen auteurism. This is the showrunner Beau Willimon speaking, as much as it is Frank. He is addressing viewers, as well as critics and comments sections. The speech celebrates the very event-ness of the second season (“Welcome back”) and, knowingly, anticipates the chatter about the show’s first big dramatic twist. It is a take-it-or-leave-it moment, a power trip in which the show and its main character assume parallel roles as bullies. Mourning is for the weak. Frank is certain that he can charm us; Willimon is sure that we’ll keep watching.

And then there is one last shot, in case there was any confusion as to the message: a pair of silver cufflinks bearing Frank’s initials. They’d been mentioned before—a birthday gift from his body man—and, called back, they make for a funny visual gag: “F.U.” Angry that the show is axing your favorite characters? Annoyed by the staginess of Frank’s soliloquies? Wary of mixed clichés like “climbing to the top of the food chain”? Ambivalent that all the episodes came out at once, on Valentine’s Day? Unsettled by just how much fun it is to watch the country be run by evil men and women? Worried that accepting this version of D.C. makes you complicit in real-life democratic mediocrity? To all of these reservations, “House of Cards” has formulated its response. We’ve been told, as the Times likes to say, to “commit a physically impossible act.” Frank despises most everybody—why should we be an exception?

Ian Crouch is a contributing writer and a member of The New Yorker’s editorial staff.

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